Testing Varnish

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <11A48748-CDA5-4185-9ECB-A6248A7351C3 at yahoo-inc.com>, Mark Nottingha
m writes:

>The bad news - testing for HTTP conformance with Co-Advisor <http:// 
>coad.measurement-factory.com/> finds a *lot* of violations. However,  
>I'm just testing stock Varnish with no configuration (as that's not  
>documented! ;). Can anyone comment on the state of Varnish's HTTP  
>conformance?

Have you tested Varnish as a proxy or as an origin server ?

Varnish is not a proxy in the RFC2616 sense.  Varnish
is an origin server.  An origin server which gets its contents
using HTTP, but an origin server nontheless.

RFC2616 only defines proxies and caches in a client side context
and Varnish is (firmly!) a server-side facility.  If in doubt,
we side with the origin server, not the client.

To the extent that we fail origin server requirements that affect
practical deployment of Varnish, we will fix, but I cannot guarantee
that we will strive for "to-the-letter-and-damn-the-cost" compliance.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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